Off Topic

language acquisition

After eleven years of countless international trips, negotiations, and grand strategies, I’m expecting to leave the international relations department in January, which I currently head at the Brazilian Court of Accounts. And I plan to make a most peculiar choice: to work in the Court’s IT department as a novice programmer, something I’ve never studied or worked with seriously before. It’s even more unusual because it means turning down another post, which would pay much better, provide more flexibility, be less demanding, and carry greater prestige. Read on, and you will understand why this change, and my decision, are quite relevant to this post, to my future studies of foreign languages, and—if I may be so bold—why they might impact the future of language acquisition itself.

My last international business trip—at least for the foreseeable future—is coming up in about ten days. I will be going to an INTOSAI Governing Board meeting in a fascinating destination: Moscow!

Naturally, my mind turned to the exciting prospect of contact with a foreign language. Most of my work trips have been to Latin American countries, and I’ve taken full advantage of the opportunities to hone my mastery of the Spanish language, which, in turn, paid ample dividends in my ability to effectively pursue the Court’s interests. I brushed up on French during a recent trip to Cameroon, and the remaining missions have almost all been to countries where most people communicate well in English.

Russia, however, is like Brazil: a gigantic country whose sheer size makes it inward looking. As a result, as I understand it, the average Russian speaks little to no English. What a thrilling challenge it would be, then, to try to communicate a bit with the locals. And just two hours ago, I didn’t know a single word in Russian!

Of course, I have a slim chance of learning enough of such a difficult language (because it’s so unrelated to any that I speak) in the next 11 busy days before I arrive in Moscow—or in the 4 days or so that I spend there at work meetings in English and Portuguese—to engage in any real communication in Russian. And although I’ve slacked lately on my Mandarin, I plan to put in at least 30 minutes a day during this same period.

So, what’s my crazy plan with Russian?

I’m going to undertake a two-week “Russian Experiment”, completely antithetical to my Mandarin Experiment. No, I won’t be watching Russian cartoons or classic Russian movies—with or without subtitles—nor will I be listening to children’s music, and then making silly videos of myself dancing to them. No, no, I’ll leave all that to my Mandarin Experiment.

Instead, I will use technology to memorize the 100 most frequently used words in Russian and 20 common expressions. I will do so with one hour of studying per day and I would wager a bet that I’ll be able make real use of it while in Moscow. At the least, I will be able to break the ice with my Russian hosts! If I can put more time in, I will learn even more words and expressions. Further, if I find the whole experience sufficiently motivating, I will continue with Russian when I return to Brazil.

The technology I’m using is simple: virtual flashcards that use a spaced repetition system to recognize the spelling (using the Cyrillic alphabet), pronunciation, and meaning of words. What’s significant and wonderful is that these virtual flashcards were made for me to order by The Natural Language Institute by one of our programmers.

I founded “Natural” over 15 years ago, but in March of this year, I got more deeply involved again, this time with a focus on technology, and, in particular, the development of custom-made applications to power our highly effective approach to language acquisition. We’ve already developed and implemented the “Lessons App,” which saves time for teachers and structures custom data related to students’ learning. We are now finalizing the “Homework App,” which will allow our own teachers—and potentially teachers worldwide—to share and then search custom-made homework assignments based on authentic materials that meet students’ exact interests and needs.

We will develop many other apps and IT solutions to make language acquisition more efficient and enjoyable. Sometime next year, we will begin offering online classes in a unique package that combines personalized one-on-one language coaching with a data-driven, customized student learning center.

While our method will continue to focus on reading and listening to authentic materials, writing essays, and speaking with native teachers, when you’re just getting started with a brand-new language, you need a different approach. One way we currently tackle this beginners’ challenge with English and French is to teach students the 500 most commonly used words in the language, which allows them to then quickly get started on reading and listening to authentic materials. (This is probably what’s most lacking in my Mandarin Experiment, but, alas, one must bear great sacrifices for [quasi-]science.)

Technology can give this first step a real boost, such as with the use of virtual flashcards in a spaced repetition system (SRS) approach—precisely what I started doing this evening with Russian.

And technology will also make the second step—being able to understand the words strung together in sentences—a lot more effective and enjoyable. As in the Mandarin Experiment, we will use authentic video that is of real interest to the learners (such as the great Chinese movies I have watched, again and again). However, we will parse the videos and use virtual flashcards and SRS to help students transition smoothly from comprehension of isolated words to full sentences and rapid dialogue in authentic videos without subtitles.

So now, perhaps, you better understand why I want to deeply explore IT and programming, alongside my forays into seemingly inscrutable foreign languages. I intend to change language acquisition for myself and hopefully for thousands of other students, making it as fun, stimulating, and efficient as possible.

This week, I finished re-watching Dragon with subtitles clip-by-clip, often repeating lines again and again, in an attempt to decipher new vocabulary. I now have over 50 terms in my Word-a-Day vocabulary list from Dragon–far more than from any other source. I register a phonetic transcription (using my own haphazard system), the source (Dragon), and the exact time that the term comes up in the movie. I do not try to translate the term, although I often have a rough translation in mind based on the subtitles and context.

When I again watch this movie or any source that I have previously worked on in this way, I am able to produce a chronological list of terms and reference them as the scenes come up. By this method, I gradually learn and reinforce vocabulary that I have been able to decipher.

These terms are all in a simple Access database that I created. In addition to using them as I repeat an entire movie or episode of a show, I also sometimes do a “Word List Review”, in which I will watch isolated scenes of various different sources to specifically reinforce vocabulary. In 30 minutes, I might watch clips from two different movies, a Boonie Bears episode, and a Qiao Hu episode, for example.

In order to render this process more efficient, I make use of a concept I became more familiar with when engaging in discussions last year on language learning forums: spaced repetition systems (SRS). The most cited example of SRS are Anki cards, a kind of digital flashcard for memorizing vocabulary or anything else. Anki cards are cool because they allow you to insert images, audio, or even video, and you can use them on your cell phone or any other device. Some people take this the next level and break down an entire movie or episode into tiny clips, with dual-language subtitles, in a process abbreviated as subs2srs. Supposedly, you can use this high-tech method of memorization, in a short period of time, to be able to watch a movie in a completely new language, whether Japanese, Bahasa or Mandarin, without subtitles and with full comprehension.

Now, mind you, I never really used Anki cards or subs2srs. Being me, I had to reinvent the wheel. I didn’t really want to distract myself with creating Anki cards or parsing videos and using dual-language subtitles. Instead, I created simple queries in my Word List database that incorporate the spaced repetition concept. The idea is that, each time you review vocabulary or whatever you’re trying to memorize, you rank its difficulty. Items that you rank as more difficult will come back or repeat sooner, while those you rank as easy will only come back to you after much longer intervals.

I made a couple little formulas in a database query to assess the priority of reviewing each term I register.

For those who are minimally familiar with Access or SQL, they will be very easy to understand. First, I defined a variable called “age”, which is the current date minus the date that I registered that term.

age: Now()-[when]

Next, I attributed a number to each level of difficulty. Each time I review a word in a clip, I assess its difficulty as hard, medium, easy, or mastered.

Finally, I use these variables to help calculate the priority. The higher the number, the higher the priority and the sooner I should review the term. The field “reviewed” refers to how many times the term was reviewed in that specific source, while “total reviews” refers to how many times the term was reviewed in any source.

priority: ([age]/([total reviews]+[reviewed]*2+1))*[difficulty]

I then use a simple query to generate lists of terms with priorities over 50 and over 100, respectively. The lists indicate which words I should focus on reviewing. The way I most often use the lists is to choose what movie or episode to watch when I want to review vocabulary. For example, if I see that a movie I haven’t watched for a while has 15 words show up on the 50+ list, I will then watch the whole movie or, alternately, review the specific scenes where those terms come up.

This system consumes very little time. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not sure whether this type of artifice improves or distracts from my learning. On the whole, I believe it is probably beneficial. However, what I am sure of is that it provides a psychological boost, as I have some quantitative parameter of progress.

I tested my comprehension while watching 15 minutes of a random Chinese soap opera in Mandarin using the methodology described in my Week 51 post. Although this year I have picked up the pace with my Mandarin viewing (and listening), I often wonder if I am making real progress. It was encouraging that the results—which are as objective as I can make them—suggest that my gains in comprehension are on track with my hours of listening.

I estimated that during the 15 minutes of the soap opera, approximately 1,453 words were spoken, of which I definitely understood 166, including repeats (such as “wo,” which means “I”). I believe this estimate is conservative, considering my self-test methodology. I feel confident in stating that I now understand about 11% of words spoken in Mandarin in the Singaporean soap opera Tale of Two Cities, and I expect this is representative of what I would understand in day-to-day standard Mandarin conversation.

This level of understanding, while far from true comprehension, is sufficient to allow me to understand more of what is happening in most situations than I would have a 14 months ago, before beginning to learn Mandarin.

I am at 26% of my experiment time, or 313 hours. As the following graph illustrates, I have been squeezing more and more Mandarin viewing time into my days, especially since mid-December (due to how much I enjoy my experiment). This trend may be slightly reversed, as I have started my Law classes again. On the other hand, incorporating music while driving into my experiment allows me to put in more time.

The graph seems to show my daughter teetering off and giving up on the experiment. Fortunately, that is not true. In fact, I believe she may have settled into a long-term participation in the experiment, in which she puts in about 1/4 of the hours that I do. She calls it “our experiment” (I melt inside) and we have tons of fun. Basically, she listens to music with me in the car, watches Boonie Bears with me some evenings, and every once in a while we watch part of a movie in Mandarin, usually a dubbed Disney film.

Her pace of acquisition is obviously far slower than mine (which is slow enough). There is absolutely no pressure on her, so she has fun and I think she is gaining a few things:

Insight into the language-acquisition process

Understanding of what an experiment and a long-term project are

Glimpses into Chinese culture

Rudiments of Mandarin language

An example of stubborn persistence (hopefully not stupid obstinacy)!

Getting back to my test, I’m very glad I did it because it has given me renewed confidence to stay the course. My results during the first few minutes were over 15%, but then gradually dropped down to 11.27%, which I rounded down to 11%. I think this drop may be due in part to simply getting lazier about jotting down words as the 15 minutes dragged on. This difficulty in jotting down words is one of the reasons I believe 11% is actually a conservative estimate.

I am hopeful that after another 47 hours of listening, having reached 360 hours or the 30%-mark of my experiment, I will score above 12%, keeping pace with the first 240 hours, which took me to 8% comprehension.

Tomorrow I begin my evening Law classes again at the University of Brasilia, after a two-year hiatus. On top of my demanding full-time job, work trips, language institute, farm and tree plantation, and lovely family, my schedule is a bit tight.

But I’m enjoying my Mandarin experiment immensely and there is no way I’m going to stop. I don’t even want to slow down. I intend to keep up my average 45 minutes per day.

Trying to fit so much into one’s day may reflect some underlying existential dilemma (actually, I’m pretty sure it does in my case), but it also takes planning, discipline, and creativity. No time can be wasted. That includes time behind the wheel. Fortunately, I don’t have a long commute, but driving to work and back twice a day and taking my daughter to the gym and school takes up a total of nearly one hour a day. On weekends, I spend at the very least three hours driving to get to my farm and then back to Brasilia.

When traffic permits (safety first, folks), I have been using that time to make hands-free calls (probably not the best idea), listen to spiritual music and talks, mentally plan projects for my language institute, and more recently listen to French radio broadcasts.

This imperative of efficiency has led me to make a significant change in my Mandarin experiment. I have increasingly incorporated listening to music into my “studies.” I have listened to music since early in my experiment, but initially only as it appeared in the videos I was watching anyway: mostly dubbed Disney movies, but also Boonie Bears and Qiao Hu.

I transitioned to using music as a deliberate learning tool when in June of last year I began repeating the video segment of Nan Zi Han (Make a Man Out of You) in the Chinese dub of Mulan, attempting to decipher and memorize the syllables. I made some progress, but it was extremely slow and I put that mini subproject on the backburner.

This year, I took up the Boonie Bears intro song, which is much shorter, and set out to learn it. That is when I started listening in the car for the sake of efficiency. I found that repeating single lines over and over again—sometimes actually turning the music off to better focus on memorizing lines—was at least as effective as watching the video endlessly. I found I was making good use of my time and advancing my learning process. I learned the entire song and made the infamous video of my daughter and me singing and dancing.

I then returned to Nan Zi Han, and I am slowly learning it, mostly while driving. Stay tuned for a much sillier home video, coming soon.

In the meantime, I chanced upon an awesome little album of Chinese children’s songs with a electronica accompaniment. It’s Little Dragon Tales by the Shanghai Restoration Project. I downloaded the album, which came with a pdf file that included the lyrics—in Chinese characters, pinyin, and English translation. The temptation was too great. Not only that—I’m fully convinced that using music for language acquisition is much more effective when one actually learns the lyrics. So I began peaking.

I now listen to Little Dragon Tales, the Boonie Bears song, and Nan Zi Han while driving. Obviously, this is exclusively oral (and mental). However, occasionally I will spend two or five minutes studying the lyrics to these songs (at zero miles per hour—no worries) to be sure I am getting the syllables more or less right, and that I have a general sense of the meaning of what I am singing.

So far, just 20 out of my 300 hours have been used for listening to music, but that proportion will increase over time. All told, approximately three of those hours have been spent while accessing the lyrics.

I have updated my Hypothesis and Methodology pages to include listening to music, which I had not thought of when I started my experiment. I am tracking the time I spend with music as carefully as my video-viewing time. When assessing my results at the end of this experiment, I will certainly take into account the use of music as well as the videos.

In sum, practical considerations, especially the imperative of efficiency, have trumped methodological purism and rigid attachment to rules. However, I believe listening to Chinese music is fully in the spirit of my experiment, even if critics will undoubtedly pounce on my use of lyrics (even though it accounts for 1% of my experiment time) to question its credibility.

One of the reasons for undertaking my Mandarin experiment is as a motivation and context to engage with language enthusiasts and with language-acquisition theory. I have done that in the past year through forums such as HTLAL and Chinese-forums, commenters on my blog, other blogs, online research, and personal observation and analysis.

For this week’s post, I decided to write down some of the major questions that are debated in the second-language-learning community and that speak to my Mandarin experiment, whether directly or tangentially. I tried to formulate them in a way that allows for yes/no type answers, and is thus conducive to an opinion survey. I converted the first few questions into the above polls and would greatly appreciate if you take just one minute to give your opinion—regardless of whether it’s strongly held or just a hunch.

Please note that, as far as I am aware, there is no consensus among polyglots, language instruction professionals, or academic research on any of these questions. There are very smart and experienced people on both sides of each debate.

Here is the complete list of questions. At the end I comment this week’s study activities.

Is it optimal to acquire languages essentially by natural/communicative methods, i.e., just listening, speaking, reading, and writing, or to include a good amount of formal/abstract study of the languages (as one would study an academic subject such as math or biology)?

Are purely immersive methods optimal, avoiding using a first language (L1) during periods that one is studying the second language (L2), or do translations and explanations in L2, when properly used, speed up and improve acquisition?

Generally speaking, is deliberate, focused memorization of vocabulary (for example, using flashcards) an effective strategy for language acquisition? Does an optimal language acquisition strategy include a significant amount of memorization?

In second-language acquisition (SLA), is it most effective to tackle the input/receptive and output/productive skills simultaneously from the outset, or to focus first on input and then on output? In other words, should one delay speaking until definite progress has been made in listening (and, similarly, delay writing until one has made progress on reading)?

In SLA, is it optimal to focus first on oral skills (listening and speaking) and later focus on reading and writing, or to tackle both the spoken and written languages simultaneously?

Is listening to audio content of which you understand very little beneficial or a waste of time? In other words, does content have to be mostly “comprehensible” to be useful or, given some visual cues and focused attention, is listening to content that is far beyond your level an effective acquisition strategy?

Assuming an equal level of enjoyment and concentration, is it generally more effective to listen to same audio content many times or to listen to as much content as possible just one time? It may be beneficial to mix the two approaches, but for best results should one spend most of one’s time repeating (intensive listening) or listening to new content (extensive listening)?

In SLA, is using authentic content (done by natives for natives) generally better than using content made for language learners? Or is using high-quality language instruction material generally more effective, at least until one has reached a high level of proficiency?

Do adults ideally learn languages essentially in the same way as children, or are the mechanisms essentially different?

Does study of grammatical rules contribute significantly to effective language acquisition? Is it efficient to dedicate a significant portion of one’s time to explicit grammar study?

Is efficiency in any given acquisition approach a function of intensity of concentration, or can subconscious acquisition, without attention, be somewhat effective? For example, can listening to radio in L2 in the background while one is completely engaged in other tasks significantly boost acquisition, or is it mostly useless?

Is effective second-language acquisition inherently similar or inherently different from first language acquisition?

Consider two second language (L2) learners. One seeks to achieve basic proficiency in the shortest possible period of time. The other does not care about short-term results, but wants to attain native or near-native level mastery of L2 with efficiency. Should they follow the same or different methods for their first few hundred hours of study? In other words, is achieving basic proficiency as quickly as possible conducive to the best long-term results, or is there a tradeoff?

Do people have widely different learning styles that should be respected for optimal language acquisition? Or is language acquisition an essentially universal neurological process, such that certain approaches are optimal for the vast majority of people?

Is there a critical period or neurological window for optimal language acquisition? If so, what, on average, is the age range that defines that period?

Given the right approach and sufficient time, could almost any adult attain near-native mastery of a second language, or do only certain people have the ability to attain near-native mastery? In other words, do adults rarely master a second language at a native-like level because most people have an inherent neurological limitation in this respect, or because people rarely put in enough time and effort with the correct approaches?

—

This week I watched the movie Shaolin. It’s entertaining, has themes I like, and is generally well-acted and produced. However, it is a second-tier wuxia movie, if compared to greats like Hero, House of Flying Daggers, or Dragon.

I watched Not One Less again with my wife, mom and stepfather—a fantastic movie that makes you feel good to boot. I also spent some time on Mulan and the song Nan Zi Han, and a bit of Qiao Hu to round out my Mandarin diet.

Despite the poor quality of my editing, I hope you enjoyed that silly video! I made it to celebrate the fact that I have finally learned an entire song in Mandarin! Thanks Guy Gray for shooting the clips.

The song is the introduction to Boonie Bears, Season 1. I spent around seven hours learning it, mostly while driving back and forth from Brasilia to my farm. After listening to the song once or twice the whole way through, I would take one line at a time and repeat it over and over, unaccompanied, until I had it memorized. Then I would turn the music back on and try to sing two lines straight through, then three, and so forth. It was arduous!

It’s funny that I don’t really know what I’m singing! I am able to understand a few words here and there, and I once read a basic (awkward) translation online, so I have a sense of the overall meaning. But the purpose of the exercise, like my video watching in general, is to get the sounds of the language in my head, on conscious and subconscious levels, knowing that my brain will gradually sort it all out.

Alongside the movies and the occasional Qiao Hu, in coming weeks I plan to watch all the Boonie Bears episodes from the first season straight through. I think there are about 100 episodes in all. I will sing along to the intro song every time, with great enthusiasm, thus enriching my viewing experience.

Disney movies dubbed in a foreign language are an excellent resource for improving one’s L2 listening comprehension. My reasons for making this claim can be summed up in two words: high quality.

The better Disney movies are endlessly entertaining because they are brilliantly scripted and executed. It’s easy to understand why classics such as Cinderella and Snow White and modern masterpieces like The Little Mermaid, Lion King, and Nemo all have at least 90% approval on Rotten Tomatoes.

Fortunately, it appears the studio takes equal care in producing first-rate international versions of these films. My impression is that the translations and dubbing are among the best in the industry; the results are satisfying for children and their parents worldwide. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Disney’s language localization is the production of country- and language-specific versions of the songs in the many musical movies such as Mulan or Beauty and the Beast. “I marvel at how they get the same overall meaning into lyrics which still fit the melody and rhyme scheme perfectly”[1] is an opinion I second without hesitation.

Most studios do not choose to translate the songs in their movies at all, and the fact that Disney does, and with such quality, is an added reason that their productions are such a fine language-acquisition resource. In my view, films are, generally speaking, the best available resource for self-study in second-language listening comprehension. They effectively mimic the way the language is naturally spoken; the visual cues greatly enhance comprehension; they are highly entertaining and easily available. This insight underpins my entire experiment.

Music, however, is a close second, with distinct advantages: as the advertising industry grasped long ago, catchy music fosters vocal and mental repetition and gets language deep into your subconscious. This phenomenon is useful not only for marketing professionals, but also for language acquisition enthusiasts.

High quality songs in movies combine many of the advantages of both learning resources. Watching numerous Disney movies again and again in the target language and carefully studying, memorizing, and singing along with the lyrics to the songs would take any child (or adult) a long way toward attaining solid listening comprehension skills.

I am currently learning the Boonie Bears (season 1) theme song, after which I plan to continue learning Nan Zi Han and then probably A Girl Worth Fighting For—both from Mulan—and probably other Disney movie songs. I intend eventually to make a CD compilation with Boonie Bears and Disney movie music and also add some infantile but catchy Qiao Hu tunes, which, unlike the others, I can actually understand.

My goal, beyond squeezing more Mandarin hours into an inordinately busy schedule, internalizing the sounds of the language, and reinforcing some vocabulary, is to be able to sing along to these songs whenever I sit down to watch Boonie Bears or the Disney movies. Thus I will not only provide some good laughs for anybody in the vicinity, I will also make the movie-watching experience more fun, and, most importantly, enhance it as a powerful language-acquisition exercise.

There is a significant comparative downside to using Disney movies to learn Mandarin or any language besides American English: you are failing to get the associated cultural understanding. The best part of my Mandarin experiment thus far has been discovering Chinese cinema. Watching wu xia epics such as Hero, House of Flying Daggers, Red Cliff, and The Warlords, and realistic fiction such as Not One Less, Aftershock, and The Story of Qiu Ju has not only been greatly entertaining, it has enriched me with insights about Chinese history, geography, and culture.

I don’t consider cultural insight a side benefit to acquiring a second language, but rather an integral and necessary part of the process. You can learn the mechanics of a language and a good deal of vocabulary without delving into the associated culture, but I doubt you can ever attain true mastery or elegant and nuanced expression without it. There is no doubt that language and culture are deeply interwoven. Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, who spoke six languages fluently, supposedly said:

“I speak Italian to ambassadors, French to women, German to soldiers, English to my horse and Spanish to God.”

Disney does such a good job of translating movies and even their songs that, invariably, a bit of the L2 culture is incorporated. Yet, fundamentally, it is Western—and especially American—culture that motivates the storylines and all the elements surrounding them. The superimposed foreign language translation will always be an imperfect fit when compared to original Chinese movies such as Shower or Curse of the Golden Flower.

However, the obvious factor that I have not yet mentioned and that clinches the argument in favor of dubbed Disney movies as a potentially valuable part of one’s listening repertoire is their appeal for kids. I’m sure there are also Chinese original shows and movies that could potentially hold Western children’s attention—and in fact I have found such a source in the Boonie Bears. But nothing gets my daughter to clock in long hours of Mandarin viewing like watching The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, and Nemo with me. We have watched all nine movies pictured at the top of this post together. Fortunately, I enjoy them almost as much as she does. I should note that they are all available on DVD on the U.S. Amazon website.

For you to use these dubbed Disney movies with your children, they will have to either have a much higher level of Mandarin (or other target language), so they actually understand most of the dialogue, or, like my daughter, be content to read the English-language subtitles. In the latter case, one needs to remind them also to pay attention to what is spoken—yet I am unsure how effective a strategy that is. I do not know whether my daughter really gets much Mandarin practice or is too caught up in reading the subtitles. I am not particularly worried about this, however, because watching subtitled movies has greatly benefited her reading comprehension in English!

In short, Disney movies are a great choice for kids learning a foreign language or—as in my case—for adults who want to share their learning experience with their kids and provide them with some level of exposure.